Autumn 2024 Balance Update

[jaxom]

3 hours ago, Orange Knight said:

Space Marines being hit with point increases is simply wild considering how badly they perform. I understand that some unique chapters are still able to get results, but the point increases and penalties should be aimed at the unique units and detachments that work well with those particular chapters, and not at the generic options.

 

2 hours ago, chapter master 454 said:

Main point of interest is the fact we are getting a dataslate update this year. The article notes that and they mention giving some adjustments for Codex Space Marines...lets hope its good!

Indeed. I’m curious about what they consider okay to futz with.

 

Quote

Our next update later this year will bring a Balance Dataslate alongside an updated Munitorum Field Manual, as well as any further additions that may be needed to the FAQ and Errata. We are already well underway with testing the upcoming updates, making changes that are designed to tackle some key areas we want to address. Specifically, we’re looking at Miracle Dice usage and generation, Cult Ambush mechanics, and making a better experience for Codex: Space Marines players, to name just a few. 

 

[LightningClawLeonard]

I don’t play 10th and haven’t previously, but…. The Ballistus is now cheaper than the classic box Dread? I feel like that doesn’t make sense. But maybe it does. 

 

On a separate but related note, glad that my most recent order is on the way: 4th Ed Rulebook, 3.5 CSM Codex, 4th Space Marine Codex, Cityfight. Elegant rules and points, for a more civilized age. Haha.

[Brother Nathan]

iron warriors- overall positivepoints cuts for most units i take and can take bastion plate back on my termy lord- win

[HeadlessCross]

5 hours ago, TrawlingCleaner said:

TS and Sisters points increases were needed in a competitve setting, same for Dark Eldar and Dark Angels. For most lists, you're dropping a character or maybe a small unit? Orks and Eldar got some points decreases which is nice, maybe not helping Orks that much.

It's interesting to see that they're decreasing points on larger units and penalising some units that were MSU spammed.

 

What they really need is to remove snowflake chapter's access to the base detatchments and to give some outperforming units a seperate points cost based on which chapter is taking them. Jump Intercessors should be more expensive for BA etc. They've already done this for BT vehicles and for units being taken outside of IA armies

Why should Jump Intercessors be more expensive for Blood Angels? Are Jump Intercessors more expensive in a Stormlance Detachment vs Anvil?

 

The problem isn't Blood Angels. 

[DemonGSides]

33 minutes ago, LightningClawLeonard said:

I don’t play 10th and haven’t previously, but…. The Ballistus is now cheaper than the classic box Dread? I feel like that doesn’t make sense. But maybe it does. 

 

On a separate but related note, glad that my most recent order is on the way: 4th Ed Rulebook, 3.5 CSM Codex, 4th Space Marine Codex, Cityfight. Elegant rules and points, for a more civilized age. Haha.

 

Dreads are mostly used in multi role and melee positions and it's firmly in the "This thing pretty much only shoots, and not particularly well." Camp. 

Edited October 16 by DemonGSides

[Rogue]

5 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

Just a quick sanity check.

Do any other armies consistently get hit with nerfs for playing their army rule?

 

Feels like GSC and Cult Ambush might be in a similar boat - we seem to be in an endless loop of nerfing units because Ambush makes them too good, then nerfing Ambush anyway, then rewriting Ambush, then points drops, then repeat.

 

Ambush has a 'feels bad' issue - when it works, our opponents feel hard done by; when it doesn't, we feel that our army rule is pointless. The balancing point seems to be vanishingly tiny, so someone ends up unhappy every time.

Edited October 16 by Rogue
Double post

[Evil Eye]

55 minutes ago, LightningClawLeonard said:

I don’t play 10th and haven’t previously, but…. The Ballistus is now cheaper than the classic box Dread? I feel like that doesn’t make sense. But maybe it does. 

 

On a separate but related note, glad that my most recent order is on the way: 4th Ed Rulebook, 3.5 CSM Codex, 4th Space Marine Codex, Cityfight. Elegant rules and points, for a more civilized age. Haha.

Good to see someone else coming over to the light!

 

Yeah, overall this update sounds like a complete disaster and further proof that the "living system" experiment (and 10th in general) has been a failure. Like we needed any more of that...

[phandaal]

5 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

Just a quick sanity check.

Do any other armies consistently get hit with nerfs for playing their army rule?

 

It really feels like this is a TSons specific problem, since whenever a points update rolls around you can basically just say everything with Cabal Points goes up as a blanket statement and you're usually correct.

 

Votann got annihilated at the start of 10th because of 9th edition rules that never fully made it live. I expect the main reason there weren't more nerfs since then is because they were already at rock bottom (*rock and stone intensifies*).

 

Sometimes, the designers get excited and come up with things that are very difficult to balance properly, and as a result the lists designed around using those things get hit with the nerf bat over and over again.

[jaxom]

4 minutes ago, phandaal said:

Sometimes, the designers get excited and come up with things that are very difficult to balance properly, and as a result the lists designed around using those things get hit with the nerf bat over and over again.

Murder your darlings.

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

Dreads are mostly used in multi role and melee positions and it's firmly in the "This thing pretty much only shoots, and not particularly well." Camp. 

 

Agreed. The Ballistus has no more firepower than a Devastator squad. It is less vulnerable to more multi-shot weapons but more vulnerable to big guns like Lascannons. It also can't make such good use of cover so its cost should not be much higher than a Devastator squad.

[Rogue]

1 hour ago, phandaal said:

 

Votann got annihilated at the start of 10th because of 9th edition rules that never fully made it live. I expect the main reason there weren't more nerfs since then is because they were already at rock bottom (*rock and stone intensifies*).

 

Sometimes, the designers get excited and come up with things that are very difficult to balance properly, and as a result the lists designed around using those things get hit with the nerf bat over and over again.

 

Which is a shame, because I like the idea that different factions feel really distinct, rather than each faction being a particular combination of generic rules. But I agree that some of the more interesting/unique ideas also seem to teeter on the divide between brilliant and terrible.

 

I wonder how much that's a consequence of having to rewrite and 'improve' every codex every three years - the design team just can't produce enough good ideas to meet demand.

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, jaxom said:

Murder your darlings.

 

Yeah. I do feel for Tsons enjoyers because of this. It sucks having a cool central mechanic and feeling like you are being whipped just for using it!

 

(At least for Dwarves, being grumpy and holding a grudge are core meta-mechanics of the playerbase. That can never be nerfed! )

[Interrogator Stobz]

Glad my mates and I don't play the main game anymore. It's awful. 

[TheArtilleryman]

7 hours ago, Naryn said:

They really have no idea what to do with Thousand Sons, do they?

Well if you had a thousand sons, would you?

[DemonGSides]

45 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

Yeah. I do feel for Tsons enjoyers because of this. It sucks having a cool central mechanic and feeling like you are being whipped just for using it!

 

(At least for Dwarves, being grumpy and holding a grudge are core meta-mechanics of the playerbase. That can never be nerfed! )

 

It's weird anyone feels whipped. The overall increase in most lists is about 100 points. Can't imagine being this upset about it. 

[MARK0SIAN]

1 hour ago, Rogue said:

 

Which is a shame, because I like the idea that different factions feel really distinct, rather than each faction being a particular combination of generic rules. But I agree that some of the more interesting/unique ideas also seem to teeter on the divide between brilliant and terrible.

 

I wonder how much that's a consequence of having to rewrite and 'improve' every codex every three years - the design team just can't produce enough good ideas to meet demand.

I think the three year cycle plays a huge part but not because they can’t come up with enough ideas. I think it’s that they don’t have time to properly test and refine those ideas before they have to release them and move onto the next thing. 
 

There’s over 30 playable races and subfactions at this point. I don’t know how big the rules team is exactly but I’d be surprised if it reaches double digits. If their time was divided equally among all the armies (which I doubt) they probably only have 3 or 4 months to develop, test and refine each codex before it’s released. And I think that’s an optimistic estimate. Plus they’re testing and refining them against codexes that haven’t even been written yet.

 

The time pressure to pump out the indexes in time must be even greater when they do a reset. It’s hard to imagine any of that having more than a cursory review and playtest.

Edited October 16 by MARK0SIAN

[phandaal]

8 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

It's weird anyone feels whipped. The overall increase in most lists is about 100 points. Can't imagine being this upset about it. 

 

Well then, since it is imaginary, imagine being less upset about it. 

[Indy Techwisp]

5 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

It's weird anyone feels whipped. The overall increase in most lists is about 100 points. Can't imagine being this upset about it. 

Your average "I want to actually use my army rule" list (a.k.a not Tzaangor spamming Brayherd) has gone up by somewhere between 140 and 180 points.

Which is a lot, considering we don't have any (non Tzaangor) characters under 100pts and don't have many (non Tzaangor) units under 100pts either.

Essentially, at the rate TSons grows jn points with each MFM update, we're approaching a point where 5 Rubric Marines will have exceeded the points cost of our Terminators.

 

If the amount of bracketed Tzaangor mentions above is making you think "Well, you could replace what you've had to remove with Tzaangors." then I invite you to observe the fact the faction being discussed is 40k Thousand Sons and not AoS Disciples of Tzeentch, no matter how much our codex writers for the last 3 editions think otherwise.

[Ahzek451]

On the bright side, the silent king finally got the TRIARCH keyword. 
....it only took a year.... 

[ThePenitentOne]

What do folks think is coming for Miracle Dice in the next update?

 

This announcement has me nervous.

 

Also: do I really need to download all of the docs in the "recently updated" section? It would be nice if all the changes were in a single doc. The process of comparing each doc to its previously downloaded version to determine whether or not it needs to be replaced is brutal- especially when it's happening 3-5 times a year.

 

Once again, 9th got it right because all of this BS update crap that makes playing 40k a full time job only applied to Matched Play.

[DemonGSides]

12 minutes ago, ThePenitentOne said:

What do folks think is coming for Miracle Dice in the next update?

 

This announcement has me nervous.

 

Also: do I really need to download all of the docs in the "recently updated" section? It would be nice if all the changes were in a single doc. The process of comparing each doc to its previously downloaded version to determine whether or not it needs to be replaced is brutal- especially when it's happening 3-5 times a year.

 

Once again, 9th got it right because all of this BS update crap that makes playing 40k a full time job only applied to Matched Play.

 

There's an index cards update document that lists all the changes.

 

I won't be downloading new cards. The changes all make a lot of sense and aren't anything major. 

[Wormwoods]

After playing a few games of 9th against Tsons that ended after one turn of nil-interaction mortal wound spams in the (blissfully) removed psychic phase, I'm gonna have to work up to the empathy, which is a me problem. If the issue they're having for balance is cabal dice, at what point is it easier to try a different core mechanic, and is that even viable mid edition? 

[Indy Techwisp]

15 minutes ago, Wormwoods said:

After playing a few games of 9th against Tsons that ended after one turn of nil-interaction mortal wound spams in the (blissfully) removed psychic phase, I'm gonna have to work up to the empathy, which is a me problem. If the issue they're having for balance is cabal dice, at what point is it easier to try a different core mechanic, and is that even viable mid edition? 

I would genuinely accept having some kind of nerf to our Army Rule at this point over having the points of every single actual Thousand Sons Marine in the army skyrocket in points every single MFM update.

[LightningClawLeonard]

5 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

 

Dreads are mostly used in multi role and melee positions and it's firmly in the "This thing pretty much only shoots, and not particularly well." Camp. 

Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense that being shorter and having a much better melee option helps it survive ranged and be more useful in combat. With my lack of experience with 10th I just saw that on paper the Ballistus is Movement +2, Toughness +1, Wounds +4, Objective Control +1 over the box dread and has 2x Attacks and Strength +1 with its lascannon and missile launcher over the box dread’s equivalents.

[Tokugawa]

6 hours ago, LightningClawLeonard said:

I don’t play 10th and haven’t previously, but…. The Ballistus is now cheaper than the classic box Dread? I feel like that doesn’t make sense. But maybe it does. 

 

On a separate but related note, glad that my most recent order is on the way: 4th Ed Rulebook, 3.5 CSM Codex, 4th Space Marine Codex, Cityfight. Elegant rules and points, for a more civilized age. Haha.

Ballistus cheaper than boxdread may not make sense. But boxdread more expensive than Ballistus, hey, it 100% make sense. Oldborn models, unless GW haven't decided its replacement, won't have attractive rules.

Edited October 16 by Tokugawa